Insofar as I am bound to the clock, I draw breathe just a bit deeper and find bounds to be relaxed after this fashion.

I know that time is defined to have a certain measure and that this measure is discrete and unchanging -- yet dependant on what occupies my mind at a given moment, the next moment in which time in itself arises within my consciousness may be any varied duration which nevertheless I experience as one episode of my higher self taking precedence.

It is not unlike the usual to pass several uninterrupted moments in contemplation with no regard for duration only to find my thoughts have carried me to a hyperbolic perception of time without recourse to that measurable passage of ticking and tocking.

time is just something humans created to keep everything happening at once.

i had the thought today of if my dogs have any concept of time, beyond hunger, the urge to pee, etc. i was gone for six hours. what did that seem like to them?

time is relative. when you sleep time passes by in an instant. when you have insomnia every moment drags on like an hour. our conceptions of time are tainted by our own individual circumstances and feelings

Of course we know from E=MC2 that the passage of time is constant as long as we don't change the velocity with which we move through space. Space and time are the same thing. Problem is, we wouldn't notice the change in time even if we change our velocity. So, the only way to have a practical view of time is the more poetic perception that the passage of time changes according to our level of pleasure/pain.

Zen teaches something called "sanctification of the mundane." If one pours enough attention into a boring task, it becomes pleasurable. Maybe this is a good way to even out the perceived passage of time.

Interesting note: We know when we observe a star 100 light years distant, we are looking 100 years into the past. Carry this constant to a closer proximity and we may assume when we look at someone across the room, we are looking at that person as they were a miniscule instant in the past.

No very deep insight for me on this one. It's like the saying "time flies by when you're having fun," although I must admit, it goes by fairly quickly when I'm productive as well. Most of the time I don't feel like I have enough time, to be honest.

And by the way, I don't think approving spam messages is an improvement to the site.

I'd go so far as to say that time, distance, size, and any other things we measure is relative to the standard against which we measure. If we choose a physical standard then time moves at a constant rate (for all practical purposes at speeds far below the speed of light). If we choose an emotional standard then it varies according to those emotions and situations.

Think about time like sound on a cassette tape. The information comes in at a certain rate and we record it into our brain.

When you record on a tape while the tape is running too fast, playback is slow and low pitched. When the tape runs too slow it's the opposite. This is a bit counter-intuitive, but when you get the hang of it, you can see that you're putting the same information as ever onto a whole lot more tape. When the tape runs at normal speed, compared to the rest of the world it is SLOW.

When we are young, our brains are designed to soak up massive amounts of information. The tape runs fast. That's why a child is so impatient when you make them sit down for five minutes. For them, subjective time is apparently slower. They are absorbing more information per unit of time than an adult.

As we age, we are still learning, but much of what we learned as a child is now considered concrete. We may absorb more detailed or sophisticated information, but not nearly as much. This is why time seems to fly as you age, or when your concentration is properly distracted.

Certain chemicals have the same effect on people, who report dialation or compression of time during their experiences. Is the tape running slow, or do they just have a lot less tape to work with?

the tape analogy above is good, but i have found that their are tricks on how to speed up the tape or slow it down at will. I mean have you ever felt like you were in a time warp? or have you ever felt like time just stopped, but you kept going? Have you ever created these anomalies on purpose?

Hmmm... if I am reading my general relativity theory right, time passes more quickly in my basement than it does on my roof.Which means that astronauts should come back to earth younger than when they left?

Dominus - interesting theory on why time moves faster as you age, but I have another. We percieve time relative to how much time we've already spent. My neice thinks Christmas takes forever to arrive because she has to wait 10 percent of her life for it to roll around. For me it's more like 2.5 percent, so it seems like Christmas is always just around the corner. I reckon if survive to an old age I'll just leave the lights up year-round.

There is no such thing as time. Time as we use it is a tool. There is change & motion, but not time. The past does not exist any more than the future. That only leaves the now. Our feeling of the passing of time is just that-how it feels.